


best friend

by theletterv (badletter)



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Dreams, M/M, Suicidal Ideation, Yearning, davids laundry list of problems, fantasizing about violence and atonement for your sins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-01-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:15:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22426171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badletter/pseuds/theletterv
Summary: david keeps having this dream.
Relationships: Gray Fox/Solid Snake
Comments: 8
Kudos: 31





	best friend

David keeps having this dream.

Well— Dreams. 

It’d probably be easier if it was the same dream. 

It started outside of heaven.

In this dream, Fox is already dead. He’s too late, missed the mark by a long shot. In fact, Outer Heaven is already burning. A bloated body, horned and weeping, is torn asunder as Metal Gear sheds it like a second skin. The sun is rising over the haze of heat. Flames lick at his heels as he tries desperately to collect the broken body of the person he, of someone— 

In those days, it was easier. He could wake up and Fox would be there, right there. David could press his face into white hair and feel his worn, warm body shift against him, tug him closer. In those days, they could pretend the distance between them wasn’t growing everyday.

In those days, Fox was there until he wasn’t. He’d been pulling away for weeks. David didn’t press. They weren’t lovers. They were just Snake and Fox and Rookie, don’t give me that look, be reasonable for fucking _once_ —

In this dream, Fox is warm hands and warmer breath against his neck and he wakes up very cold. 

And then David was gone, too. But you never really leave FOXHOUND.

After Zanzibar Land, David isn’t really sure why he’s still alive. He didn’t want to leave Fox behind, but they insisted. It was too dangerous. He was dead anyway, what good would it do. They needed to be home for dinner. David never really liked Christmas.

In this dream, he kills Fox. He always kills Fox. Sometimes he’s spared the sensation of cartilage crunching against bone, the skin tearing at his knuckles, and the ache in his heart. Sometimes, for a moment, he forgets this is life or death. He’ll forget that they aren’t just shooting the shit and this will still end with them both on the floor breathing heavy and fond, Fox with his thigh pressed between David’s legs. But sometimes Big Boss will grow out of the shadows, a flayed corpse, a thing of burnt meat and hair and sinew. He’ll hand David a gun and David will take it, no questions asked. Fox will sit there, no questions asked. Fox takes the bullet like every other bullet he’s taken for Big Boss and David blows his own brains out for good measure. 

Long live Big Boss. 

In this dream, he has a knife in Fox’s gut and they are connected in a way they’ve never been. Fox’s blood is on his hands and he’s leaning closer, pushing the knife deeper into himself. Fox’s mouth is on his own and he can taste the blood coating his teeth. He can feel Fox rotting from the inside out. It burns and seeps into his skin until he’s rotting too. David presses harder as if he could crawl inside and make a home there, have their flesh and blood mingle until they are one and the same.

When he wakes, David retches into the bin at his bedside. All bile and booze and it makes his stomach churn. Sweat soaks through his shirt into the sheets. All he has is the darkness around him, pulsing shapes in the shadows and behind his eyelids that make him heave again.

In those days, that fear-sweat clung to everything. It hung in the air. It was hard before he had the dogs. Begging every day to drink himself dead this time, please, this time. Too much a coward to put a bullet between his eyes or even let that cold seep into his bones and take him. It was funny, how he thought the nightmares would end once Big Boss was gone. 

In those days, he looked in the mirror and saw a stolen face, watched the skin and fat and muscle melt from bone. In those days, he washed his hands raw and never got Fox’s blood off him. 

In this dream, Fox is alive. He looks at David from where he lounges on his, their, couch and says something that slides off like water on oilskin. The sound is there, but indistinct. It’s been harder to recall his voice. But his hands are calling him and David is at his side, stepping over the big sleeping dog. Frank— he calls him Frank these days and he is David as much as he is Rookie and Snake is a relic of the past— pulls him until they are chest to chest and a tangled mess of limbs. 

In this dream, David isn’t trying to kill himself anymore. It’s easier when he wakes up and he’s not alone, Frank pressed against his back and the dog somehow wedged between him and the edge of the bed. Big Boss and FOXHOUND are behind them. All that matters is now and this time together, he just wishes he could understand what Frank was saying, wishes it wasn’t so difficult to make out his features.

When he wakes, David weeps. Fox would have hated Alaska. He hated the cold, but he would have loved the quiet. He would have loved the dog. So, David gets a dog. It’s easier when you’re living for something else. He gets more. They give him purpose, he starts setting goals. Plans for the future. He still drinks too much, but he’s trying. 

And then. Well. 

Isn’t that always the way. 

They sweep in, knock him off balance. All these years, all the work he’s put in to just be human again and they don’t care as long as he can still hold a gun. There’s no rest for the wicked. David has work to do.

Turns out Fox was in Alaska all along.

It’s kind of relieving how much Naomi hates him. That’s what he deserves after all those years, always the pawn, yet always the victor. In those days, no one had really been all that displeased with him. The military threatened arrest for his “misconduct” but they were hardly asking David to atone for his sins. Solid Snake was a hero after all. Big Boss was a monster, good riddance. And who was Gray Fox but another body between him and the goal. 

David didn’t want accolades or a legacy or forgiveness, he’s only ever wanted his punishment.

And then David kills his best friend again. He couldn’t protect him again. His shadow smears Fox’s body against the floor, a mess of cables and blood, and for a horrible moment David wants to put his hands on him. Coat his hands in what’s left of him again, dig his fingers in and find out how much is Frank Jaeger and how much is a perversion. David would know him blind.

In this dream, Fox lives and dies and lives and dies and— And Fox’s hands hold David’s face so gently even as David takes him apart, the sensation of warm flesh and cold metal superimposed. _Make me feel alive again,_ he says, and David tries, he really does. His voice is different from how David remembered it, or maybe he’d started to forget. The blood on his fingers is tacky as it begins to dry but he doesn’t want to look away from Fox’s face. Even if he has to remember him scarred and broken he doesn’t want to forget. 

He had to leave the body again but David will carry Fox with him.

After Shadow Moses, he keeps going. He has to. He sets goals. Plans for the future. He doesn’t have the dogs but he doesn’t drink anymore either. They’re doing good work. He throws himself into every inch of it. He will be the body on the ground until he can’t be anything anymore. He’ll run himself ragged if that’s what it takes.

FOXDIE might kill him but a lot of things might kill him these days and putting his life on the line for something that he believes in is enough to make him feel alive again. He has finally found his way to atone. 

The people help, too. It turns out companionship goes a long way. He tells them about Fox, the person he was before they broke him, about when David was the rookie. It feels good, letting them know the person he loved and not the shell that remained. 

In this dream, because he will always dream, David dies. Not by FOXDIE or a faceless merc or another shadow, some other phantom. It is Fox’s hands that are around his throat and it feels right. He is on top of him, warm and heavy and alive and whole. David’s hands are loose on his thighs. _You look terrible, Snake,_ he says, smiling with so much love, and David laughs a strangled laugh. Fox squeezes harder and harder. He presses in so tightly he doesn’t know where David ends and Fox begins and they are at peace. 

When he wakes, David keeps going.

**Author's Note:**

> title
> 
> let’s talk about snox. can we talk about snox? i’ve been dying to talk about snox all day.


End file.
